CD Review: Cellbound “Fallen Angels of Sui Caedere”

When you hear an album that “speaks” to you, it makes it that much more enjoyable to listen to it. That describes my experience listening to the new debut release from the Cleveland, OH band Cellbound. The CD, “Fallen Angels of Sui Caedere,” is the type of album that makes you wish for the good old days, musically speaking, when musical styles hadn’t changed.

“Fallen Angels of Sui Caedere” from Cellbound features what could be considered as “classic” Heavy Metal; the type of Heavy Metal that existed back about 15 years ago, before there was anything called “rap-metal,” back when Heavy Metal stood alone as its own musical style and not part of some current, modern-day hybrid combination musical style.

Cellbound is made up of David Borowske and Shaun Vanek on guitars, Greg Baise on bass, Todd Alley on drums, and Chris Emig and Tom Herttna on vocals. With Emig and Herttna both covering the vocals in the band, a definite difference can be felt when listening to the band’s sound. And with Chris Emig and Tom Herttna providing a female/male combination on the vocals for Cellbound, the band has a style that could make any listener want to pay attention to the band’s musical style.

While Tom Herttna provides the usual amount of power you would associate with any Heavy Metal singer’s vocals, Chris Emig provides a contrast with her feminine vocals. However, if you think that, since Chris is providing the feminine touch, her vocals must be delicate, you’d be wrong. Songs like “Bleed Through Me,” where she provides a blood-curdling scream, and “Nothing To Die For” allow listeners to hear that Emig can hang with the best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal vocalists.

Cellbound has taken the style of Heavy Metal that was around back in the nineties and brought it into the current music scene. With other bands wanting to merge Heavy Metal with Rap or other styles, it’s great to find bands that want to keep Metal as Metal and who want to keep the evilness of the genre alive.

While “Bleed Through Me” and “Nothing To Die for” are two of the strongest tracks on the album, the best song on the album is “Fallen Angels of Sui Caedere,” the title track of the album. The track provides the listener with the best opportunity to hear what the band is all about. The quartet of Borowske, Vanek, Baise and Alley give the listener some of the best Heavy Metal I’ve heard in a long time, while Emig and Herttna provide the vocals to “Fallen Angels of Sui Caedere,” a song about someone who ended it too soon. While the lyrics of the song are grim, the band plays the song upbeat. And Emig and Herttna alternate between the sadness and anger contained within the words. The CD even includes the video that was made for the track.

With the style of Heavy Metal that Cellbound has created on their new CD, you can hear some of the band’s influences very clearly. The band mentions bands like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Pantera among others. If you like Heavy Metal from bands like that, then Cellbound may be a band to look into. And the perfect place to start would be the band’s new CD of “Fallen Angels of Sui Caedere”.

This album is made for those of us who like good, old-fashioned Heavy Metal. For me, this debut album from Cellbound was a joy to find.

To find out more about Cellbound and their debut release, you can find the band at their MySpace account at www.myspace.com/cellbound33.